Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday January 26, 2012 @12:12PM
from the regulations-trump-free-choice dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "PC Magazine reports that the U.S. government used convicted con artist David Whitaker, owner of an online business selling steroids and human growth hormone to U.S. consumers, to help federal agents in a sting operation against Google when he began advertising with Google with advertisements that included the statement 'no prescription needed,' clearly violating U.S. laws. Google's settlement with the U.S. government for $500 million blamed AdWords sales by Canadian pharmacies, who allegedly were selling drugs to U.S. consumers. 'We banned the advertising of prescription drugs in the U.S. by Canadian pharmacies some time ago,' Google said then. 'However, it's obvious with hindsight that we shouldn't have allowed these ads on Google in the first place.' Peter Neronha, the U.S. attorney for Rhode Island who led the multiagency federal task force that conducted the sting, claims that chief executive Larry Page had personal knowledge of the operation, as did Sheryl Sandberg, a Google executive who now is the chief operating officer for Facebook. In 2009 Google started requiring online pharmacy advertisers to be certified by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy's Verified Internet Pharmacy Practices Sites program and hired an outside company to detect pharmacy advertisers exploiting flaws in the Google's screening systems."

That's when the American business school ethic takes over. No right or wrong, legal or illegal, no such thing as pride in workmanship or quality; just whatever it takes to make the books look good for the next quarter. And, if it's illegal hope you're not the sorry sucker holding the bag before you get a chance to cash out.

Sorry, I have worked with to many public business at the C*O level. frankly, you are wrong.is that some peoples point of view? yes. But it's not common, and it is not the 'American Business school ethic'

Did you read the article? it's form a Con-Man with no collaboration, and it reads like a classic tale that would be woven by a pathological liar.So, long term Con-Man and liar, no confirmation, any of the alleged specifics are common knowledge, and then the feds do nothing with this information. His interaction with Google certainly doesn't sound like the typical advertiser interactions

Sorry, I have worked with to many public business at the C*O level. frankly, you are wrong.
is that some peoples point of view? yes. But it's not common, and it is not the 'American Business school ethic'

Did you read the article? it's form a Con-Man with no collaboration, and it reads like a classic tale that would be woven by a pathological liar.
So, long term Con-Man and liar, no confirmation, any of the alleged specifics are common knowledge, and then the feds do nothing with this information. His interaction with Google certainly doesn't sound like the typical advertiser interactions

Mod parent up. The whole thing COULD be true, but it's interesting how quick people can be to believe anything that backs up their preconceived notions (e.g. rich executives are evil) and then pile on with "yes, we all know that" sort of comments without even reading, much less questioning, the story.

They cite numerous credible sources, including the US Attorney who led the investigation. Oh, and there's also the fact that Google admitted to wrongdoing as part of their settlement. Feel free to keep your head in the sand though.

"Mr. Whitaker, who pleaded guilty and faced a maximum 65-year prison term, was sentenced in December to six years, following what federal prosecutors called "rather extraordinary" cooperation. He is due for release in two years."

I think you missed geekoid's point. As the article of the WSJ article proclaims:

Con Artist Starred in Sting That Cost Google Millions

All of the information about executives knowing something is affirmed by a single self confessed con artist. What I think is fair to ask for is more confirmation of these affirmations by someone who is not a known liar or would otherwise gain from divulging such information.

All of the information about executives knowing something is affirmed by a single self confessed con artist. What I think is fair to ask for is more confirmation of these affirmations by someone who is not a known liar or would otherwise gain from divulging such information.

And by the prosecutor : "Mr. Page, now Google's chief executive, knew about the illicit conduct, said Mr. Neronha, the U.S. attorney for Rhode Island who led the multiagency federal task force that conducted the sting."

It is also what you get when you provide incentives to your sales reps that ONLY look at how much money they brought in.Was there a bonus for denying shady deals? Was there an allowance to do due diligence on shady-looking companies? Or was it "your base salary is $5 an hour. Your commission is 50%. Don't slack."?

If it was the latter, don't be surprised by your sales reps turning a blind eye to shady set ups. And by the way, execs are not immune to this. If you reward them for turning a blind eye, they will

Yes, how dare they accept ads from companies willing to sell drugs to American consumers at a low cost. Clearly, the ethical party here is the government, who props up the monopolies of the pharmacy industry by force and prevents sick Americans from getting what they need to live at an affordable price.

There is something to be said about banning the re-importation of US-branded drugs from Canada at a lower price. It's nuts that branded pills sent to Canada at a lower price become impotent when shipped back to the US.

However, the story covers more than this. They were (pretending to) ship RU-486, the abortion drug, along with steroids and human growth hormone into the US, which is illegal. Moreover, it's not the word of a con man. There is evidence that top level Google executives were actually aware of th

This sounds like the most bullshit part of the article. Larry Page does not micromanage every single ad on Google, there's not enough time in the day for that. This was not some major advertising deal that would have gotten executives involved. Instead some lower level sales person screwed it up.

"Children might buy drugs!" Their parents should really have talked to them about this.

"People might get high off drugs they buy online!" So what? They can do what they will with their bodies.

"People will get high from these drugs and commit crimes to fund their drug habit/because they're high and belligerent!" People who harm others should be prosecuted, regardless of whether they're on drugs or not.

"People will sell low-quality drugs online, advertising them as even something else entirely!" If you buy drugs online and you don't do a thorough check to make sure the seller is reputable or you're getting what you asked for, then you kind of have it coming to you.

Yes, it would require people to take more responsibility for their actions. But the benefit is that you wouldn't have the government-enforced pharmaceutical monopoly, which I think would benefit consumers far more than these other effects would hurt them.

It doesn't have to because of a scam, it could just be an exotic allergy someone has and the pills could work great for the other 99% of the population. People cannot check this for themselves, that's why in most (all?) developed countries the government has an agency that does it for them and practitioners that can be held accountable to dispense advice. When there's no verification that what's in the box actually corresponds to what's claimed on the box people will get killed. When people can just decide

If you're using a climbing rope or installing a brake part you probably have the expertise to check its quality. Who can test drugs at home ? Most of us aren't chemists. Even if you take the drug and it performs the function you bought it for it still could contain some cheaper active ingredient, or some binding agent, that some people could be allergic to. Drugs are dangerous, even the ones most people would consider harmless, when improperly used.

You can come up with all the bullshit excuses you want, but the fact is the war on drugs is far more harmful than you could ever reasonably expect drugs to be. Even if you don't use drugs, you've lost civil liberties because of it.

LOL, you think it's when the company goes public that its executives decide to throw morals out the window?

Sure it's true that some sociopaths use the "fiduciary duty to shareholders" aspect of a public company to justify their pre-existing lack of ethics and morals (despite the lack of shareholder lawsuits against companies that don't behave unethically). Just how much have you bought into that narrative that you think that's when the problem actually starts?

Back in college I worked for a very large computer retailer. One of the things the managers there did, was take hardware that they couldn't sell, and just store it in the back room. They wouldn't discount it, because their bonuses were dependent on the margin they maintained for the quarter, and if you dump a bunch of laptops at a discount, it adds up very quickly. Anyway, this went on for years, with each manager just piling up the problem for the next guy to deal with, before rotating into some new positi

Stupid margin calculation. They should have calculated the margin over product shipped to the store, not product sold. That would have ended that practice right there.

Measure the wrong KPI's, get the wrong outcomes.

And I don't blame the executives for responding to this the way they did. If you were measured based on lines of code produced, for say 50% of your income, YOU would find a way to pad the crap out of the code real fast too (and leave asap too, likely) - leaving your replacement with a maintenance

It isn't just business school ethic. It's legal ethic is anything. Every for-profit business is now incorporated with a mission/objective that is something to the effect of "have the purpose of engaging in and may engage in any lawful business activity". This is actually suggested by the individual states in their paperwork to incorporate.

So every employee is part of a team whose primary objective to seek profit in any manner that is technically legal. Every board member, exec, officer, manager, and grunt o

Business doesn't hesitate to play that game in reverse by claiming that actions were ethical because they didn't break the law. They do it all the time. Every time they break a contract for instance because it makes more economical sense to break their word.

So your ethical code is OK with breaking the legal code whenever you feel like it ? I could see the point when talking about individuals and civil disobedience but anyone who thinks it's OK for corporations to ignore the law should have their head examined. It's enough that corporations as an entity are psychopathic [commondreams.org] and that some actively recruit psychopaths [independent.co.uk], let's not give them a license to break the law too.

Ya because Americans being able to get decently priced drugs, is such a crime. My father buys drugs from a company like the ones they mention in the ads. He can't afford drugs here in the USA even though the ones he gets from Canada are exactly the same, yet cost one tenth the price.

Ya because Americans being able to get decently priced drugs, is such a crime.

I agree on this, but as I recall, a lot of these shady "pharmacies" were selling unlimited quantities oxycontin and xanax to anyone who said "I have a toothache" or "I'm a little stressed" for grossly inflated prices. In other words, drug dealing.

The one my father uses doesn't sell pain killers, they sell actual medication. For things like arthritis, asthma and other such maladies. Though I imagine there is some truth to what you say but I'd imagine most people who want pain killers, just find a doctor who is willing to write them the prescription. They aren't terrible hard to find.

Hopefully next election we'll boot out the Harper Party and get a government interested in bulk purchases and economies of scale.:)

Harper had a minority government until the left committed suicide by forcing an election. That has to be one of the biggest own goals in political history, and I don't see why you'd expect him to do worse in the next election after that debacle.

Here is the bigger question. Why shouldn't people be able to drug themselves into oblivion if they want? Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and all...what if they find happiness in a pill bottle? Oh right, we're only supposed to do "good drugs" prescribed to us by drug peddlers^W^Wdoctors. Oh and take our "happy pills" like SSRIs/ADHD meds and that's okay as long as you don't get "high". How are some of these doctors and pharmaceutical companies any different than drug dealers and narco-terrorists?

In general, I agree, but some drugs as so addictive or harmful that they present an unfair medical or welfare burden on society. Though legalization of some "safe" drugs may keep people from moving to more harmful drugs of unknown quality and purity (like Bath Salts [wikipedia.org])

Your proposal to let people drug themselves into oblivion only makes sense if the drug user could sign away his rights to governmental financial support or medical treatment.

I was ready to rail against this, but after reading the article, it's all shit.

I can see 500 million reasons to believe it's all true.

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent page-one story today on how federal agents caught Google deliberately breaking the law so it could make money off sites selling drugs online. That case ended with a settlement in which Google avoided criminal prosecution by paying the feds more than half a billion dollars.

"Google acknowledged in the settlement that it had improperly and knowingly assisted online pharmacy advertisers allegedly based in Canada to run advertisements for illicit pharmacy sales targeting U.S. customers."

Or the prosecutor :

"Mr. Page, now Google's chief executive, knew about the illicit conduct, said Mr. Neronha, the U.S. attorney for Rhode Island who led the multiagency federal task force that conducted the sting.""But the company's ad executives worked with Mr. Whitaker to find a way around Google rules, according to prosecutors and Mr. Whitaker's account.""The federal task force, which also included the Food and Drug Administration's Office of Criminal Investigation, was preparing criminal charges against the company and its executives for aiding and abetting criminal activity online, prosecutors said.""Suffice to say this was not two or three rogue employees at the customer service level doing this on their own," said Mr. Neronha, the U.S. attorney. "This was corporate decision to engage in this conduct."

No ? How about the shareholders :

"Six private shareholder lawsuits have so far been filed against Google's executives and board members, alleging they damaged the company by not taking earlier action against the illegal pharmacy ads."

Depending on how you word that, I'd agree. It's very obviously under Murdoch's direct influence. The decision to publish this story (as opposed to any other) is almost certainly in retaliation to Google's public opposition to SOPA/PIPA, about which Murdoch has already vociferously expressed his (ahem) disapproval.

I should preface this by saying that I am no Google fan. I think they have made many poor decisions over the past few years, and the GPYW initiative has caused me to switch over to DuckDuckGo full time.

Having said that...

Why is it illegal for Canadian drug companies to advertise their goods in the United States? The US has insanely high drug prices, and Canadian imports of those same products are (or could be) beneficial to the lives, health, and finances of who knows how many people. This is an unjust law, and am having an incredibly difficult time finding a justification for it.

This seems like yet another instance of the pharmaceutical lobby protecting their vast profits from competition.

The same reason it's illegal to import DVDs from Africa to sell in the US. The drug companies find they can sell drugs in the US for a LOT more than they can almost anywhere else, so they do. Allowing imports from other countries would defeat that.

The same reason it's illegal to import DVDs from Africa to sell in the US. The drug companies find they can sell drugs in the US for a LOT more than they can almost anywhere else, so they do. Allowing imports from other countries would defeat that.

You see, when they say "globalism" and "global economy" what they mean is that corporations can off-shore to get the cheapest prices available for human labor.

When humans want to do things the other way around by making an "off-shore" international purchase to get the cheapest prices available for goods, that's a crime and suddenly the government wants to enforce a brand of protectionism.

Ok, not that I'm disagreeing with the conclusions in that study, but I can't understand how the Pharma companies are blowing $57B on advertising. That seems absurdly large to me, but maybe I'm just not calibrated to costs of advertising.

They also mention that 13.4% of sales revenue is being used for R&D. Is there any way that they're using non-sales revenue for this? I'm thinking investment returns, patent royalties, and maybe government grants could be used to support the R&D, and they're using

The reason DVDs in Africa are so cheap is that Africans can't afford to pay a month's salary for a DVD. The reason DVDs in the US are so much more expensive is that the movie companies need to have somebody pay for the making of the movies.

"You see, the exploitation is for your own good, really!" Not buying it.

The reason drugs in Canada are so cheap is that Canada has a single-payer system (the government) and they refuse to pay very much to get drugs. Since drug companies still want to get some money from Canada, they sell to Canada above cost but well below what it would take to recoup the R&D costs on the drugs. The reason drugs are so expensive in the US is that drug companies need to have somebody pay for R&D.

US pharmaceutical companies spend a LOT more on advertising than they spend on R&D. Which makes no damned sense whatsoever, considering you are supposed to go to a medical professional who selects and prescribes a drug to you based on its proven medical effectiveness. Advertising to the public should have no place here, only merit and fitness for purpose.

This has been covered every this story comes up on Slashdot. Unregulated, unlicensed pharmacies are dangerous--not only do people get drugs without a doctor's prescription, but there's no guarantee that the drugs are even the right drugs or that they've been handled properly. Counterfeit drugs, outdated drugs, contaminated drugs, mislabeled drugs--anything goes. And there are other problems, like the fact they can sell to minors or that there is nothing legally enforcing confidentiality like with a legitima

Some drugs like OxyContin are only supposed to be available with a prescription, since they could be abused for recreational use.

OK folks, has anyone out there actually purchased what they thought was a narcotic or benzo or other US DEA controlled substance through one of these 'pharmacies'? I'm actually curious. None of the people so inclined that I deal with on a daily basis have ever admitted to getting anything in the mail - it all comes from Fred, the local dealer.

You would be setting yourself up for a bust by the Postal Service inspectors - the fact that it came through a dodgy address in Canada would be an easy tip off for t

How is "no prescription required" an obvious violation? This would have to be specific to each drug, and the person who is looking at it would have to know what drugs require a prescription. The average person depends on the pharmacist, drug retailer, or doctor, to know what requires a prescription. if it's on the shelf (even virtual), people assume it must be legal. If the government wants people to quit buying drugs from Canada, then it needs to mandate "fair and balanced" drug pricing.

This issue is not whether you have a prescription or not, but whether you need them. You can know you need drugs without having a prescription.

In my own case, I am on some pricey immuno-suppressive drugs. One is Prograf, which is a brand name for Tacrolimus. I know I will need this in some quantity for the rest of my life. I am currently well insured, so it's not an issue. However, I would still need Tac if I was unemployed, and I would certainly consider getting it from a reputable non-US pharmacy. The prescription I have for this is issued annually - 90 days + 3 refills, or 30 days +11 refills, typically. Now, if i wanted to get really cheap, i'd stop seeing the doctor, get the lab work done on my own dime (i'd have to pay for it anyhow) and do my own analysis of the results (not rocket science, desired tac-levels for post-transplant are well established, and printed on the lab report. Then I'd buy drugs to fill the need at the lowest cost available internationally.

Really, once you know your getting accurate dosing and purity, the government doesn't have much additional to offer.

The idea that pharmacies should be forced to provide drugs cheaply outside the US, and Americans can fund R&D and profit margins is unfair. Those costs should be spread equally amongst all the developed nations of the world, not just the US. So, I am in favor of opening the borders, or imposing some stiff taxes on cost differentials between the US and other countries.

And why would you want to buy them without a prescription? That seems pretty silly, really.

That question is not relevant. The relevant question is, "if consenting adults want to do this with their own bodies and their own finances, why would you want to send men with guns after them to stop them by force or threat of force?" That's what needs justification.

How about we instead turn our rightful indignation against Big Pharma and ask why the fuck is it not legal to buy the same drugs from Canada for less? When I moved to the US, I was shocked by how badly US residents are being gouged when it comes to pharmaceuticals. Nowhere else in the world do drugs cost as much as they do in the US. In some places the same exact drugs by the same exact companies are sold at 1/5th to 1/10th the price.

Read the original article. Read Google's non-prosecution agreement with DOJ [googlemonitor.com], in which Google admits to felonies and agrees to pay $500 million to avoid criminal prosecution. All this has been out in the public record for months.

This was not about "Canadian pharmacies". DOJ was led to investigate Google because they were investigating some Mexican drug dealer who had an "online pharmacy" as a side business. DOJ set up a blatantly illegal web site, "www.SportsDrugs.net, designed to look "as if a Mexican

Come on all you Ron Paul supporters, let's hear it. We *should* be able to buy Canadian drugs at 1/10 the price of what we're being ripped off in the USA for the same crap.

And before you bring up safety/prescriptions/handling/lifethreating issues as a factor, consider this: We buy food from China, which has far less controls regarding safety than Canada does.

That Apple Juice you're buying in Walmart? Madde from Chinese grown Apples. Who knows what those apples were exposed to, what toxins are in the ground the were grown in, how they were handled/processed and what else the factory that makes this juice also makes?

The Apple Juice you buy in Walmart could be as deadly, or even more deadly than any Canadian Pharmacy or drug "internet purchase".

The *ONLY* reason that drugs are as heavily regulated as they are in this country is to protect Corporate interests (aka BigPharma). There is NO OTHER reason. Any other excuse you've been given by the talking heads on TV is window dressing.

And if we had a real free market economy, sure, some people would die, but that's the way free market economies work. Frankly, that's the way this economy works as well, regulated or not.

Think about how many people die because they are denied health care due to insurance rates, or they can't afford the medication they've been prescribed.

No matter which way you go, people are going to die, that's just a reality. But to say that you're saving lives by not allowing Canadian Pharmacies to sell in the USA is a complete lie.

I am amazed by the lengths to which people on this site will go to rationalize Google's behavior. It's not the morality of advertising drugs that is at question here, it's the morality of knowingly allowing something which is illegal. If Page really knew (as the GOVERNMENT, not the conman, asserts) that they were accepting ads that explicitly stated "no prescription required" then he knowingly broke the law for profit. Plain and simple.

In all your yapping about who's right, wrong or has to support big pharma think of this:

Number of Google employees that the government considered sending to prison: 0Number of people selling less than 1 ounce of marijuana sentenced to federal prison: 5,452Number of drug arrests per minute in the USA: 25

500 million is petty chump change for the US federal government. You could define the Planck time in terms of how long 500 million dollars would keep the US government in operation.

The whole thing is stupid anyway. Good drug dealers don't deliver ads to your browser. They use networks of trust.

Like all such restrictions on what consenting adults do, these laws are a sort of IQ test -- the dumb ones get caught. The smart ones? Unless you participate you never even know they are there. This overuse of police power and regulatory authority breeds smarter dealers who are harder to catch just like what overuse of antibiotics does to staph.

Seriously some of you really think all this regulation of some things and straight up prohibition of other things is changing anything? Every day you get in your car and drive to work I guarantee you, other drivers around you are high on something, carrying something, transporting something, about to sell something. This foolishness just makes them hide it, that's all.

500 million is petty chump change for the US federal government. You could define the Planck time in terms of how long 500 million dollars would keep the US government in operation.

500 million is a huge windfall for the small agency that conducted the sting. Unfortunately it gives them the resources to setup and entrap other large companies. This happens all the time. Another example is the Michigan State agency that figured out how to go after people buying cigarettes over the internet and not paying state taxes - they got enough cash from the first round of lawsuits to triple the number of people working in that dept.

If you read the article, it details just how much effort the govt put into convincing and tricking Google execs into accepting the ads. It's important to note that Google initially refused the ads entirely until they changed the website so that you had to contact the company directly (which makes the website an advertisement for services and not a store, btw). Then the feds had to keep nagging and begging to get the ads released in the US. This is a classic case of entrapment.

I think Google just paid the $500 million because it's chump change to them and they want this to quietly go away as a long trial could have cost more in lawyers fees and damage to their reputation..

Is the next target going to be eBay because they knowingly allow counterfeit items to be sold? They've already tried zinging them for this before.

500 million is a huge windfall for the small agency that conducted the sting. Unfortunately it gives them the resources to setup and entrap other large companies.

I think this should be "Fortunately". When I was in chemotherapy, my capecitabene tablets cost $1600 for a 2 week supply, or I could buy them from an on-line pharmacy for $650. It was tempting to save a bunch of money but I didn't because that medication was too important for me to trust an unknown supplier. One of other patients at my clinic told me that he ordered some from an online pharmacy in the US (or so he thought) and they arrived in an anonymous envelope from Guyana and with a size, shape and c

If they were made in India, they might differ in size, shape, or color because India doesn't recognize pharmaceutical patents for uses or chemicals -- it only recognizes patents for manufacturing processes. So, when somebody like Pfizer patents a drug in India, they get a patent on the specific process they use to manufacture the drug. If somebody comes up with a different way to make the same drug, they can patent it and sell the drug in India with complete legality. Cipla is notorious (among American/Euro

It doesn't go "directly in their pockets," but what happens is that the extra money is brought to the attention of the people who allocate budgets. Those people then allocate more to whoever brought in the money in the hope that there is more where that came from and extra staff will better be able suck that cash out of the economy and into the government budget without anything so politically unacceptable as "tax increases."

Why should we worry about google leaving if we fine it for breaking laws; citizens don't get the same luxury. We should in no way treat corporations better than people just because we're afraid of them leaving.

Have to agree. Sting? Google? They could have just told them. If the government wants to steal there money and ours, I would prefer plain old taxes. No speed traps, crazy fines in some cities that will get everyone about once a year, etc. Sometimes things get past the Mexican border too. Why should Google do their job anyhow?

I know Google has a lot of money, but a $500,000 fine is plain theft. Has the government stopped drugs coming in thru Mexico? Maybe they should be fined for that. It's all silly.

Agreed, no fees for drivers licenses and plates and marriage licenses. No tolls or other charges. All this crap is just a way to avoid using the tax system to pay for government services.

Its made to SOUND fair, the people using the service pay the fee, but if you are pulling in a few billion a year its far more preferable to pay a $50 fee for your license plate* than to pay your fair share of the cost to provide everyone with plates under the progressive tax system. Who pays the difference between your million dollar fair share of that cost and the $50 you paid instead? The single mother of four whose kids went hungry last night, she works in a factory owned by the billionaire.

Because nobody's time is worth billions. Those billions represent the labor of millions of fellow citizens and those citizens needed millions of license plates in order to produce those billions. The guy who ends up with the billions should pay for the license plates it represents, not the fellow citizens who did the work.

*Analogy is slightly flawed since license plates exist primarily for the purpose of systematically charging fees and really should be gotten rid of.

Actually if you look at our history the times of the highest growth was when the top tax rate was 70% or above which makes perfect sense if you think about it. you see when you have a tax rate that high for the uber rich if they sit on the money then they don't sit on the money, they invest it instead since there was all these provisions that lowered their tax rates if they used the money to increase productivity. Now they simply set it overseas thanks to being able to electronically send it anywhere in a nanosecond or just dodge the taxes all together like the double dutch and Irish tax scams. For a good read on the subject i'd suggest this article [thomhartmann.com] where the author lays it out clearly and concisely and puts that 'job creators need lower taxes' myth to bed. to see what the lowest taxes on the top 1% in the history of our country has done for us follow it up with this article [theeconomi...seblog.com] which again lays out the facts and shows if lower taxes on the wealthy were to actually create jobs they sure as fuck aren't being created here.

in the end its not about fair or letting some fifth generation superrich continue the dynasty, its about a government doing what its supposed to do which is promote the welfare of the entire country and not just a specific class. As Buffet so accurately put it "We have had class warfare for years and we're winning" which all you have to do is look out a window at the boarded up homes and closed factories across this once great nation to know this is true.

Actually if you look at our history the times of the highest growth was when the top tax rate was 70% or above which makes perfect sense if you think about it.

Actually if you look at our history, the times of the highest growth was in the *1800s* when there was ZERO income tax, for ANYONE.

The massive growth in the 1950s was due to our country being practically the only industrial power on the earth left standing after World War II. The growth was *in spite of* incredibly high taxation, not because of.

But it only takes a few in business to do the wrong thing to make the whole business look wrong, as in the case here. Certainly most Google employees knew nothing of this, right?

Of course, since Google is in fact an Actual Person, and Actual People who aren't schizophrenic can't both know and not know something, then we should legally assume that if any one Google employee knew about this, then they all knew about this, and therefore every Google executive should go to prison. Sounds fair to me, them bein

It's funny you say that, have you ever actually ben in an American Business school? I have, and we were required to take several ethics courses as well as weighing the ethical impacts of any decisions we made in case studies.

Just curious - did the ethics courses try to teach you how to differentiate between one decision that makes a lot of money from one that makes slightly more money or did they have any lessons on how to decide between A, which breaks some laws and involves some lies but makes the company a nice profit, and B, which obeys the law but costs the company huge losses and your job.

I haven't heard of any business schools where they teach that a business should behave in the same manner that would be considered ethical for a human being. Mostly I hear more along the lines of ethics in terms of consequences for action. For example, it is commonly taught that breaking a contract is a business decision and it is fair to make if you are willing to accept the consequences but when an individual does this it is considered lying, breaking your word, failing to uphold your obligation, etc.

Well, maybe they are, maybe they're not, but of the three articles published in the last 24 hours by Slashdot:

One was an outright falsehood. (The claim Google is forcing all new sign-ups to create Google+ profiles.)

One was misleading, and arguably the truth was positive (spin was "Google is changing their ToS so that everyone has to share their details across all their websites!"), reality was "Google has always shared information across their websites, and the ToS is being standardized and hence made easier to understand.

And then there's this one, which appears to take a negative incident for Google (Google did, indeed, take ads from online pharmacies), and add some serious but unsubstantiated (and dubiously sourced) allegations to it (Billion-dollar-a-year Google's CEOs for some reason deciding, directly, to chase the million dollar market for online pharmacy ads. Does this one even make sense?)

Very confused here. I thought corporations were now people so where are their 1st amendment protections?

That thinking only applies when you are a corporate entity looking to publish negative, often completely untrue ads about politicians without revealing who you are or who gave you money... If you are looking to do something like making money off of the promotion of the availability of prescription-like substances on the international market, you bet your ass that it's not about rights any more...